Archive for the ‘Archaeology’ Category

BBC - A History of the World

Monday, June 7th, 2010

BBC The World in a Hundred Objects

For those interested in all things historical, I’ve added a short article about the Brewster Stereo Photo Viewer to the new BBC “A History of the World” web site which acompanies the rather good Radio Four series, “A History of the World in a 100 Objects”.

The site and in particular my article about the viewer is here: Brewster 3D Viewer

The article on my on the main Parlington History site is here:
Artefacts Section

The idea is a naked attempt to push more visitors to the History site, as people keep telling me that the profile of the site is too low!

Parlington Artefacts Display at Crossgates

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

This coming Friday, 28th May, I will be setting up a new exhibit at Crossgates Heritage Centre of my Parlington artefacts, for the East Leeds History and Archaeology Society. The picture below is a view of the Centre at Crossgates Library, and I presume, my items will be placed in one of the glass cabinets. Whilst this is somewhat smaller than the four cabinets on display at Lotherton Hall, I’m sure I can put enough into it to make it a worthwhile exhibit.

Crossgates Heritage Centre

Lotherton Parlington Exhibition Closes

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

Brewster Stereo Photo Viewer
Having not written any articles recently, I felt I should add a short note about my exhibition of Parlington artefacts that have been on display at Lotherton Hall these last six months and more. Today the items have been taken down and packed into boxes, to return to Parlington, so ends my first mini-exhibition, which by all accounts was well received. Perhaps the best item on display was the collection of stereo photo cards from the 1860’s and the “Brewster” mahogany stereo viewer (shown above). I think it reasonable to believe that the photographs were taken by one of Gascoigne family, or a close friend and found their way via the then butler John Shelton to his descendants and finally back to Parlington! The details of the extrordinary discovery is recounted on the Parlington history site here.

Tutankhamun was not born in Swaffham!

Friday, November 27th, 2009

Swaffham Cemetery

Cemetery Swaffham

This may seem an odd post title, but during my visit to London last weekend, whilst on route to the V & A Museum in South Kensington, I noticed a sign in the tube network which gave dates of various luminaries from the past and their birth places. There was the name of Howard Carter [1874-1939] the Egyptologist, famous for discovering the tomb of Tutankhamun on the 26th of November 1922. His birthplace was stated as Swaffham, and having visited the place recently, I was unaware of this fact. [This link is to an earlier post about a visit to Swaffham] This reminded me of my own mini discovery a couple of years ago whilst cutting the grass, my foot slipped down a rabbit hole and I grated my ankle on a hard object which turned out to be the remains of a brick wall.

Porcelain Figurine

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

The weather was too good to miss the opportunity after work, so I continued some excavations around the location of the fountain, the centre piece of the lawn in the nineteenth century. Of course I had to find the location first, but recent geophys scans gave some insights so off I went!

Local Archaeologist Gets Involved

Monday, August 24th, 2009

Wall Painting Fragment of Lime Plaster
I was recently introduced to a local archaeologist who lives in Aberford and we have since discussed some of my findings at Parlington, on Sunday this last weekend I showed her some pieces of the fragments of hand painted lime plaster discovered in the demolition rubble. They ares quite possibly seventeenth or early eighteenth century. I had already shown the fragments to the curator at Lotherton Hall and there is an article on the Parlington history site here. However she was so impressed that we got stuck in and dug out some more, luckily the weather was excellent throughout most of the day, so we were able to find not only quite a number of additional pieces, but also some large chunks of plaster coving the same pattern as found in that location earlier and detailed here on the history site.